Reviews - The Journal of Belarusian Studies

354 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES
by the text is one of superficiality.
Almost everything is dealt with
extremely briefly. The best part in
terms of thoroughness and accuracy
is probably the section on physical
conditions, the worst undoubtedly the
eight, quite appallingly inadequate
pages devoted to history. The chapters
dealing with industry, agriculture and
transport are essentially propagandist,
in the sense that they refer only to
the many positive achievements of the
Soviet period and omit any consideration
of problems or negative aspects
of the economy. One would not gather
from this book that Byelorussia in
many social and economic respects
lags well behind most of the other
Union Republics. The text is a rather
rosy-tinted introduction for the general
reader; it has nothing to offer the
specialist. This is emphasized in the
woefully brief bibliography of only
49 items. Appropriately to this general
appeal, the volume is most attractively
presented. The quality of paper
and printing is high by Soviet standards
and the book is very well
illustrated. In addition to many, often
rather small, black and white photographs,
there are a number of colour
plates and maps. It is not unfair to
compare the work with a meringue
— attractive to look at, but not much
to bite on inside.
R.F.
TVORČAJE PABRACIMSTVA. Adam Maldzis. Navuka i Technika, Minsk,
1966. 160 pages.
Adam Maldzis's new book deals with
Byelorussian-Polish literary relations
in the nineteenth century, and makes
a very real contribution to knowledge
of the cultural history of this important
period which will be appreciated
by layman and scholar alike. Much of
this talented critic's material is new
and all of it well documented, although
the abundant footnotes are
hardly a substitute for an index, even
in so short a work. In actual fact the
book's small dimensions are deceptive,
for it contains more 'meat' than
any of its predecessors in this muchabused
genre. There is little of the
verbiage and irrelevant or hypothetic
discursiveness that has for so long
cast a blight on literary criticism in
Byelorussia and, to a lesser extent, in
the Soviet Union as a whole. Maldzis
shows a perhaps surprising amount
of respect for the 'established wisdom'
of Byelorussian scholarship and yet,
on the other hand, he is often consciously
polemical in his attempts to
rehabilitate such unjustly condemned
writers as Barščeŭski, Rypiński,
Čačot, Kirkor and Jelski — to name
but a few, — who have long languished
under a pall of official disfavour.
In its thoroughness and originality
Tvorčaje pabracimstva is above
reproach. The influence of Polish literature
on Byelorussian writers is
considered alongside the question of
Byelorussian influences on Polish literature,
and the cultural background
of the times is well filled in with, to
take only one example, fully documented
lists of Polish books published
in the Byelorussian territories at
various times during the nineteenth
century. Maldzis implicitly rejects the
modern concept of language as the
only arbiter of a man's literary nationality
and is thus prepared to consider
the Polish alongside the Byelorussian
works of multilingual writers
like Dunin-Marcinkievič; indeed, he
even embraces in his view of Byelorussian
literature some writers, like
Syrokomla and Mickiewicz, who rarely
or even never wrote in this language
at all. This certainly widens the scope
of the study and is often helpful in
throwing extra light on linguistically
Byelorussian works.
Another traditional broadening
factor, here relatively sophisticated, is
the consideration of political alongside
literary events: in the section on Kastuś
Kalinoŭski one welcomes some new
information on the peasants' attitude
to the patriot's campaign, but elsewhere
tortuous explanations of Dunin-
Marcinkievič's 'inner conflicts' make
painful reading, particularly in a
work of such generally high
scholarship.
The chapter on Dunin-Marcinkievič
(pp. 85-123) is, on the whole, extremely
interesting and informative although
the conventional wisdom of 'critical
realism' creeps in at one point. This
work, together with Ściapan Hrabčykaŭ's
valuable (but still, amazingly,
unpublished) study of the writer's